does anyone know the best weather sites or apps for this area of greece
thanks to who can help

Hi - look for your sea area on "wind and sea consorzio lamma", an Italian site and unfortunately the Ionian occupies just a corner of the useful charts, check the forecast against what you get from "poseidon.hcmr.gr", a Greek site. Listen out for Radio Monaco broadcasts at regular intervals on ch 67vhf. Browse around "eurometeo.com" for forecasts in different formats, and good luck. When are you going?

Jeff

Hi Jeff we off end May
for 6 weeks
regards

You'll have a great time, but, sorry, I buggered up on the Radio Monaco reference - you won't get Monaco in the Ionian, but you will get Italy, on ch16 or a local coastal channel, after a call on ch16. Its in english and italian.

I used www.windy.com/ you can switch between a few different weather models and even do some basic routing on there, I spend more time looking at the gusts, swell and waves to work out how smooth sailing it would be.

The part on there I watched closely after getting caught in a nasty storm (70knot+ gusts) that wasn't on any of the 4 weather apps or broadcast on channel 16 was a thing called the CAPE index which another sailor and meteorologist over there got me onto watching after I went looking for answers to get more information on how to predict these things, www.windy.com/-CAPE-Index-cape?cape,36.067,39.287,4 it is an indication of the built up energy in the atmosphere which could result in small localised storms that otherwise go unforecast. These don't tend to happen much over oceans like around Australia, but in the Med where sea temperatures can heat up in shallow pockets they are quite common and cause a weather phenomenon known as a medicane, they tend to spring up with little warning. I did quite a bit of research before I went across but never heard about these things in all I read, check out the boats at 1:40 these would be local boats and even these guys were caught out unknowing.

Less than a 1% risk, and not trying to scare you, its rare, but if you are prepared you will tie up to a strong mooring and go to shore for a nice meal while it passes over, and not get caught 6nm offshore like I did. After that if the CAPE index was high, even if there was no storm warning we would still spend that day exploring on land.

Good luck, will be an amazing trip, enjoy every bit of it.